After all it wasn't such a very long way by the road, though it was in another county. The motor stopped at the drive gate, Paul and Thor descended, for, despite entreaties, this hospitable man refused to come up to the house.
"You'll let me know when you've found the printing thing that spells right, won't you?" Paul called out at parting.
"I most certainly will," the man called back, "and if you find it first I expect you to tell me."
* * * * *
Paul's family did not share the reticence of his late host. He was catechised at long length, and would assuredly have been punished but for father's intervention. Father, who refused to be anxious or excited when his younger son played the prodigal, seemed rather to sympathise with his wandering propensities. "As if anything could happen to the boy, with that great dog always at his heels," he said scornfully, when, before lunch, we had all suggested the manifold disasters that might have befallen Paul. "It's no use expecting a boy to stay in the grounds for ever. Let him go out and tramp the country occasionally, and when he comes back take no notice, and he'll soon tire of it. Paul likes to make a sensation. It would be quite flat and tame if we were none of us the least concerned as to where he has been. You may be sure he'll fall on his feet whatever way he goes—he's that sort."
All very well for father, who was the least inquisitive man on earth, but Fiammetta and I were bursting with curiosity, and I noticed mother hovered near during Paul's recital of his adventures.
Just at bed-time he discovered that he had left his "chuncheon" behind. He remembered that it "stuck into him rather" as he sat talking to the man who wrote plays just before lunch, and he had slipped it out of the string round his waist and laid it at the back of his chair.
"You'll never see it again," said Fiammetta. "Somebody's sure to throw it away."
Paul looked sad. Then his face brightened—"I don't think so," he said. "Nothing's ever throwed away out of that room.
"How do you know?" asked mother.